Shaped Spam Musubi Bento (290)

All right. It’s time to panic. I’m only nine bentos away from #300 and I still don’t know what I’m going to do for it yet. Any requests? Ideas? I’ve been drawing a blank.

This is a bento I made for Baby Girl yesterday. Oahu weatherpersons caused a frenzied panic over “high winds” that would be dramatically wreaking havoc across the islands. Schools were closed. The University shut down all campuses and told all “non-essential” workers to stay home. (which included me, yay) Everyone was like, “Eh, what da heck is going on?” I mean, there was no mention of a hurricane or even a tropical storm. When Friday finally rolled around the sun was out at my house and I was like, “Uh…”

So anyway, we were at home until I had to go pick up my mom from the airport. I’d been thinking about doing this for a couple of days and was pretty happy with the results, though the nori straps didn’t quite work out how I’d imagined it.

I had planned on making two for the kids, but Buddy fell asleep on the couch just before I started, so I ended up just making one for a photo. He ate regular spam and furikake rice for lunch when he woke up later. I took photos on how to make these.

I actually opened two cans of Spam for this because the first can I opened I accidentally began slicing in the normal way, which ended up being too narrow for cutting the shapes. Habit, I guess. I put the first can in a bag in the fridge to use for breakfast. The second can I opened I cut the correct way, which is the “long” way. I chopped up the excess spam and used it to make some of the same instant yakisoba I posted about the other day.

I had to pick an onigiri mold that had thin sides so that it could double as both a cutter and a mold. You can see the molds in a photo below. Next, I began simmering the spam shapes in sato shoyu sauce.

This sauce is made from equal parts soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. When I’m feeling cheap, I use water instead of mirin. The taste doesn’t differ all that much in my opinion. I usually start the heat on medium and once it comes to a light boil I reduce the heat to low and just let it simmer until the spam begins to turn a darker color. Don’t let it cook for too long or you’ll end up with some overly dark and overly seasoned spam.

Next, I made the onigiri from the molds.

If you read my blog regularly, you might notice this is the same mold I use to make my Star Krispies Treats. ^_^ Once I had the onigiris shaped, I sprinkled some Nori Komi Furikake on it. In my opinion, Nori Komi and Aji Nori are the best ones for spam musubi.

Next, I put the spam shapes on top. I cut 1/2″ strips of nori, folded them in half length wise, and strapped them onto the flower and star in the dip areas of the shape. I had originally thought to only use one strap, but it looked a little goofy, so I added one more.

I lined the box with lettuce, which Baby Girl keep screeching about until I told her I’d eat it for her. I put a bit of the yakisoba in underneath the musubis then added pink sushi grass and flower apples. Since she was eating it right then, I didn’t dip them in lemon juice.

I was very unhappy with the way the photos turned out. Usually I have a lot of time to fiddle with the white balance and color mode, but Baby Girl kept complaining that I was taking too long, so I had to snap what I could and try my best to fix it up in Photoshop, but that proved to be rather difficult. Usually I can fix things up pretty nicely. See my little tutorial on the forums to find out a little about how I do that.

I’ve updated the recipes page to include a recipe for something I blogged about a long time ago. I’m slowly working on putting things in here and I’ll post whenever I add something so people can check it out.